A whole-home remodel is where you stop fixing rooms one at a time and redo the house as a system: layout, wiring, plumbing, HVAC, insulation, and finishes together. In Fort Worth, that looks very different in a 1925 Fairmount Craftsman than in a 1968 Wedgwood ranch, and the differences drive budget, schedule, and permits. Our whole-home remodeling work starts with figuring out which kind of house you have.
The 3 kinds of whole-home remodel in Fort Worth.
Whole-home remodels in Fort Worth start from one of 3 places: a historic house with original systems past their useful life (2-wire electrical, galvanized supply, cast iron drains, one bathroom, a closet-sized kitchen); a mid-century ranch in Tanglewood, Overton Park, or the TCU area with good bones and a chopped-up plan; or a 2000s production house in Heritage or Presidio where the builder-grade finishes and layout never fit the family.
The order of operations differs for each. Historic houses are systems-first. Ranches are layout-first. Production houses are mostly finishes and a few walls.
Exterior rules in the overlays, interior freedom everywhere.
Fort Worth’s historic overlays cover much of Fairmount, Ryan Place, and Mistletoe Heights, plus designated properties elsewhere on the near southside and west side. The distinction that matters for a whole-home remodel: the Fort Worth Historic and Cultural Landmarks Commission reviews exterior changes. Interior changes are yours.
So you can open the parlor to the dining room, move the kitchen, convert a bedroom into a primary bath, and change every finish without a hearing. Touch the street-facing exterior, add a dormer, enclose a porch, change window openings, or add square footage that reads from the sidewalk, and you need a Certificate of Appropriateness before the building permit.
On overlay houses we design the interior with full freedom and draw any exterior changes to the district’s guidelines from the first sketch, then file both the Certificate of Appropriateness and the permit with City of Fort Worth Development Services.
Rewiring and re-plumbing a 1930s house from end to end.
If your Berkeley Place or Park Hill house still has knob-and-tube or cloth-wrapped wiring, a fuse panel, or galvanized pipe, the remodel is the moment to replace all of it. The walls are open. Doing it later means opening them again.
Pier-and-beam construction, which most of these houses have, helps. The crawlspace lets electricians and plumbers run new lines under the floor without trenching concrete: new supply and drains, a panel sized for a modern kitchen and HVAC, and dedicated circuits the old house never had.
Plaster is the other reality. Once you cut into plaster over wood lath for wiring, you’re deciding room by room whether to patch, skim, or replace with drywall. We make that call with you during design so the wall-repair allowance is realistic, not a surprise at demo.
Second-story additions and the roofline problem.
A second story is the most common way to gain square footage on a Berkeley Place or Ryan Place lot that can’t grow outward. It’s also the change with the most review.
Plan around 3 realities. First, an engineer has to evaluate the foundation and framing before anyone draws a second floor, and pier-and-beam houses often need reinforcement. Second, setbacks and height limits still apply, and in an overlay the Commission looks at whether the new roofline reads as original or as a box on top. Setting the addition back from the front wall and keeping the front gable intact is often what gets approved. Third, you’ll likely be out of the house once the roof comes off.
We model additions in 3D so you see the massing from the street before we submit anything.
Ranches in Tanglewood, slabs in Wedgwood, HOAs up north.
Tanglewood, Overton Park, Rivercrest, and the TCU area carry 1950s to 1970s ranches on larger lots. Whole-home work there is usually layout: the wall between kitchen and den comes down, a formal living room becomes a primary suite, the back grows where the lot allows. Most sit outside the overlays, so standard zoning governs the exterior.
Wedgwood and Candleridge are slab-on-grade, which changes the plumbing math. Moving a kitchen or bathroom on a slab means saw-cutting and trenching concrete, so we keep wet walls near existing drains where we can and price the trenching honestly when we can’t.
In Heritage, Presidio, Saratoga, and the Alliance corridor, the whole-home job is mostly interior, but any exterior change goes to the HOA architectural committee alongside the city permit, and we prepare both.
Living through it from 55 minutes away.
We’re headquartered in Plano, and Fort Worth is about 55 minutes west on I-30. A whole-home remodel runs for months, so we don’t run it remotely. Your dedicated project manager is on site for every trade day and inspection, trades work in full batched days rather than losing mornings to traffic, and you get a written photo update every week.
The rest of the process is the same on every job: consultation and site walk, design with 3D visualization, a fixed-scope proposal with allowances and written change orders, one project manager through the build, a final walkthrough and punch list, and a care guide at handoff. Details are on our process page; the Plano whole-home remodeling page shows the same approach closer to home.
If your project is really 1 or 2 rooms, start with kitchen remodeling in Fort Worth or bathroom remodeling in Fort Worth. For everything we do in the city, see the Fort Worth service area page.
Book a consultation.
Whether you’re holding a 1920s bungalow with original wiring or a Tanglewood ranch with too many walls, start with a site walk. We’ll tell you what the house needs first and whether any of it goes to the Landmarks Commission. Book a consultation and we’ll schedule a visit.
